Webinar: Enabling Voices, Demanding Rights: Enhancing community and women's participation in decision-making processes in land investment

In 2018, the International Institute for Sustainable Development and Oxfam developed a new resource entitled Enabling Voices, Demanding Rights: A Guide to Gender-Sensitive Community Engagement in Large-Scale Land-Based Investment.

This step-by-step, practical “how-to” guide is designed to support communities, especially women, as they look to increase their participation and voice their interests in decisions around agricultural land investments. 

The tool provides a framework that operationalizes international and regional guidance on land governance and responsible investment in agriculture. It ensures that they are able to make informed decisions based on the latest developments in these areas, such that they can reap sufficient benefits if and when an investment is agreed upon.

This webinar presented a brief introduction to the guide. It began with an overview of the key steps in agriculture-related land investments, defining what community engagement looks like in that context. The second half of the webinar highlighted emerging evidence, providing examples from the tool’s pilot phase and showing how the tool can be adapted and applied.

The webinar was held on February 27, 2020, at 3 p.m. CET / 9 a.m. EST / 5 p.m. Nairobi. It was moderated by Francine Picard Mukazi, IISD. The presenters were Jesinta Kunda (Zambia Land Alliance), Ronald Bagaga (Eastern and Southern Africa Small Scale Farmers’ Forum [ESAFF]), and Charles Opiyo and Naomi Shadrack from Oxfam. The webinar also featured a video presentation from Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

The webinar was held on the Zoom platform. It can be viewed below and on IISD's YouTube channel.

We would also like to take this opportunity to share a video made by ESAFF Uganda with support from Oxfam, showing how the tool has been used in practice to date.